The way CQC fees are to be calculated for GP providers will remain the same in 2019/20, the regulator has said.
In a consultation on fee changes for community and residential social care and dental providers, the CQC said they are ‘not proposing any changes this year to the fees structure for… NHS GPs’, following changes announced earlier this year.
The CQC announced in March that a new fee calculation formula based on the number of registered patients would replace the previous banding system.
Under the new formula, which took effect from 1 April, GP providers with one location and a patient list of 5,200 saw their fee decrease from £4,526 to £3,473, while providers with two locations and lists of 10,000 and 8,300 saw their fee increase from £8,371 to £11,449.
The CQC said in the consultation document: ‘This approach means that we need to recalculate fees for individual providers each year.’
It added: ‘The changes we made last year to how we calculate fees for NHS trusts and NHS GPs means that individual fees may change slightly for these providers, though the total amount of fees collected from these sectors will not.’
The regulator explained that it intends ‘to allow changes from last year to bed in and understand their impact before suggesting further changes’.
Meanwhile, the latest consultation proposes increasing fees for community social care and dental providers, and decreasing fees for residential social care providers in 2019/20.
The document said: ‘The net, overall increase for all sectors will be £3.1m… and will be sufficient to ensure we cover our regulatory costs for the next financial year.’
CQC chief executive Ian Trenholm said: ‘The consultation proposals we have published today follow the plans we set out to meet the Treasury’s requirement to recover our chargeable costs in full from providers.’
The consultation closes on 17 January 2019.
This story was first published on our sister publication Pulse.
